Auf Achse
by makishef
Summary: Funny that John dealt in fire, but Bobby had just as hot a temper. (Or: boys smoking, scrapping and dropping the f-bomb.) Between X1 and X2. St.John & Bobby, slash, mentions of Bobby & Marie.


Title: Auf Achse  
Author: makishef  
Pairing: St. John/Bobby, implied Bobby/Marie  
Rating: R  
Summary: _Funny that John dealt in fire, but Bobby had just as hot a temper._ Between X1 and X2. Boys smoking, scrapping and dropping f-bombs.  
Notes: For the June 2004 challenge at Dry Ice, and dedicated to Kasi. Title comes from a Franz Ferdinand song of the same name.

* * *

John lay there a while, breathing hard, then pushed himself to a sitting position with a grunt.

"Christ," he muttered, dabbing at one nostril; he winced at the sight of blood on his fingertips. Louder, he asked, "Feel better?"

Bobby's chest was heaving, and he looked down at his sometimes-friend, already beginning to feel the ache in his knuckles. As if it hit him just then, he quelled a smile and said, "Yeah. Yeah, I do," before flopping to a seat in the grass beside John.

It hurt his wrist when he landed, and he lifted his hand to examine it. The skin was still whole, though there was a smear of blood that wasn't his own. He took another long look at John.

Bloody nose, split lip, a red mark that would likely bruise on his cheekbone, but otherwise as annoyingly composed as he usually was. Funny that John dealt in fire, but Bobby had just as hot a temper.

It made him feel as easily manipulated as the flame from John's Zippo.

Bobby took the cigarette when it was offered to him; after all, it wasn't as if Marie was ever going to taste it on his breath, was she? He sneered at it, then put it to his mouth, inhaling as the disembodied flame floated over to light it.

There was blood on the filter, and it hurt his jaw to close his lips around the cigarette; John had gotten a few solid hits in, too.

They smoked in silence, a tense sort of truce between them. Things had only been this bad between them when John first arrived, and then it was John throwing the first punch every time. It had often been all Bobby could do to defend himself; they had grown up since, and Bobby had grown more.

He looked over to see John pinching the bridge of his nose, chin on his chest. There was blood on the front of his shirt. Bobby said nothing, but he fished a tissue from his pocket and handed it over. John accepted it without a word, cupping it below his dripping nose.

Bobby watched placidly, holding the smoke in his lungs until he thought it was burning its way out. Finally, John sat up, wiping the last clean bit of tissue under his nose to clean away the congealing blood. The back of his hand was smeared coppery-brown, where he had wiped before and let the blood dry.

John let the tissue drop to the grass, then raised his other hand to finish his cigarette. Bobby noticed that John's filter was bloody, too.

Finally, he couldn't stand being quiet any more. He gave a weak laugh, stubbing out his cigarette. "How do you think the girls will react to us?"

"Probably tell us that boys fight when they're sexually frustrated." Bobby let out a short laugh; that was their accusation when this used to happen so often, before they were supposed to have grown out of it. John ground out his own cigarette, then flicked it away from himself. "And Marie will think she understands, but she won't." He looked at Bobby then, and Bobby felt lost for a moment, unable to speak under the weight of that gaze.

He understood then, or thought he did. "You think she'll think we fought over her?" He blinked. "Well, I mean, we did, but—"

"No, we fucking didn't. The only thing she has to do with this is that you've been a real asshole since she got here." John looked disgusted for a minute, the same look he'd had when he started this whole thing. "Marie's going to think that like, I want her or I'm jealous or something."

"Aren't you?" Bobby asked it before he thought, before the question had even fully formed in his mind, much less any filter to keep him from saying it. His jaw snapped closed with an audible and painful clash of teeth.

The sound rang in the quiet that followed. Then, sounding as if the wind had been knocked out of him, John growled, "Oh, fuck you, Drake." Angry color flushed his cheeks, and Bobby might have backed down, except he thought he had a chance to regain the upper hand in all of this.

"Sexually frustrated, Johnny?" he asked, carefully gauging the expression on John's face as it turned toward him, hazel eyes flashing hot with anger, and maybe under that, pain.

"Why? You want to do something about it?" John's voice was tight, controlled, and definitely challenging him to keep pushing it.

Bobby could feel himself getting hard looking at that familiar mouth, full bottom lip swollen further from the bloody split in it. By way of an answer, he reached over, fingers resting above John's knee, and he leaned closer. He didn't close the distance entirely, though; he paused, hovering close, because this wouldn't count for anything if John didn't kiss back.

Then he felt those lips press hard against his own, John's body leaning into his, feeling much too familiar in his arms, and he let out a hiss of breath as that tongue swiped over the cut in his top lip. John's slick tongue filled his mouth with the mingled tastes of copper and ash, and they fell back in a fumbling heap.

John had a hand tangled in his hair and the other sliding over his ribs, fingers slipping under his t-shirt and burning hot against his skin. Bobby's hands curled over John's back, fingers clenching in John's shirt to pull it upward.

His teeth clamped onto John's lower lip, sucking it hard until John jerked his mouth away. "Ow. Fuck," he hissed, tonguing at the wound that Bobby had opened again.

"You want to?" Bobby slipped a hand around to John's hip, thumb dipping beneath the front waist of John's pants.

John laughed, then, though it didn't sound entirely amused. "Is that all you want with me, Drake?" he growled, palm sliding to cover Bobby's sternum, fingers splayed over his collarbone, and Bobby could feel heat like a furnace against the thudding of his heart. Bobby found it a little harder to breathe, and he had to seriously consider the question, because this wasn't new, no, but it had been a while, and things had changed between them. _Since Marie arrived_, said the nasty voice in his head, the one that sounded suspiciously like John at his most brutally, bitingly honest.

"No. I don't—maybe," he stuttered, all in a rush, and watched John's eyes as John watched his Adam's apple bob nervously.

John barked another laugh, even less amused now. Bobby felt the tension melt from his bones when John's mouth dropped to suck hard between neck and shoulder; it tightened again like a vice grip soon after. "C'mon, Bobby," John purred, coaxing a tight shudder from him at the mix of that voice and his name and the way John followed it by kissing his way up the tendon that led to his jaw. "What do you want from all of this?" It was a murmur, because John knew that he hated it when people whispered directly into his ear, and he let his head fall back when hot breath gushed in. "From _me_?"

Bobby's brainpower was slowing, like clockwork cogs slowing, the factory shutting down, and because of this, he couldn't answer just to get what he wanted. He had to be truthful, but this could still work, because John liked forcing Bobby to shut his brain down and just _enjoy_, because John liked controlling him, and Bobby didn't mind being manhandled if it was John doing the handling. "I want—I just want someone I can _touch_," he finally said, jaw aching with the effort of having held it back as long as he did.

"And I'm comfortable?" John finished for him, then bit hard at his earlobe, which made Bobby gasp and drag John's hips down hard to feel that erection against his own aching cock. There wasn't much of an erection there. "I'm _easy_?"

"Yesss—No!" And it dawned on Bobby that maybe he was something of an idiot. His eyes snapped open to look at the resolute anger dug into the lines of John's face, even as John pulled away from him, out of his grasp. "Jesus, wait. That's not—"

"What you meant? Right." John got to his feet, and Bobby stared up at the swollen, split lip and the bruise that had indeed blossomed on his cheek. It made his jaw and side ache, made his cock ache especially. John vulgarly adjusted himself; Bobby's gaze immediately fastened there, as if searching for proof that he had gotten some kind of response that wasn't all anger and hurt and John's twisted way of teaching him the lessons he should have been able to learn on his own.

"Johnny," he pleaded, and received a glare for his efforts.

John lit a cigarette, then slipped both the pack and the lighter back into his jeans pocket. "Don't whine at me, Drake. We both know you'd regret it later and blame _me_ for whatever the fuck happened, because it's certainly not your fault if you're so fucked up that you chose to date the Virgin Mary and still want to get off with your roomie." John's face looked as if he might spit at Bobby, but instead he inhaled roughly and blew the smoke upward. "This ain't happening just because you're fucking frustrated with your girlfriend, Drake. If you want me, you better fucking want _me_ and not the first warm body you find to replace what you can't get with her."

And John walked away from him. Walked away from him! Bobby's mind spun for a moment, and he pushed himself to a sitting position. "Johnny, Christ, just listen to me for five seconds!" It took him a moment to realize he had yelled, but it wasn't as if John listened anyway; John flipped him off without turning.

Bobby flopped back into the grass in a disgraceful heap, and it made the backs of his arms itch. He lay there a long time, unmoving.

He should have gone after him, he reasoned later.

It wasn't the last time Bobby made that particular mistake.


End file.
